98 Years of Algren

It's not so much of a stretch to say that maybe Nelson Algren defined Chicago the way that Chaucer defined the English language. Panned by many Chicago critics in his lifetime, Algren's Chicago: City on the Make was deemed "a scented object" by the Chicago Tribune at the time of its publication. They now annually grant a Nelson Algren Award with publication in the paper and $5,000.

We could tell you about Algren's childhood on the South Side or that he was incarcerated for five months for stealing a typewriter, but we think your time would be better spent reading his work than ours. Algren died of a heart attack in 1981, but his stories still resonate today, 98 years after his birth.

As anyone who reads Algren knows, he captured the city — he knew the alleys and back doors as the veins and pores of Chicago, his living, breathing "woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real."

So lift a shot glass, punch somebody out, or pay your way out of murder charges in celebration of a writer who loved not only Chicago's boulevards and bright parks, but more so its grimy underbelly and seething soul.

Photo of Nelson Algren's old home by TheeErin.

Thanks, Jess!